Who Needs a Résumé?

“If someone says, ‘I’ve never needed a resume; after my first job, I’ve always just been hired from one job to the next,’ that’s really not true,” Panyik said. “Especially if their company is publicly traded or they work for a bank, there are (Securities and Exchange Commission) filings, there are state organizations and federal organizations that want to know about the employee. They want to know that if you’re putting your money in a bank, they have a résumé and have checked this guy out.”

Panyik said, however, that the résumé rules don’t all apply for high-level executives if the company is using an executive recruiter.

“If that résumé is seven pages long, that’s fine,” Panyik said. “It doesn’t matter, because an executive recruiter is going through the stacks of résumés and only brings qualified candidates to the client. It’s not like putting an ad in the paper, where you get 100 résumés you have to sift through.”

Kim Hamm, practice partner in charge of recruiting for the Springfield office of accounting firm BKD LLP said that except in extremely rare cases, everyone should keep an up-to-date résumé on file.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a time when I haven’t used a résumé,” Hamm said. “It’s the first thing you have to look at; it helps to develop an impression. I guess there could be situations where there’s a senior vice president of General Electric or something like that, but you’ll still want to know what they’ve done – you’ll want to know what accomplishments they’ve had.”[[In-content Ad]]